


Las Almas Perdidas

by clumsygyrl (thegirlthatisclumsy)



Series: Neu Orleans 'verse [1]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance, The Used
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Gen, Magic, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-05
Updated: 2005-08-05
Packaged: 2017-11-10 16:24:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlthatisclumsy/pseuds/clumsygyrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say that The Event changed everything.  All living and non living things changed in that one instant.</p><p>And were still changing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Las Almas Perdidas

**Author's Note:**

> Author's notes: written for xoverau's [Mini MCR Group Challenge](http://www.livejournal.com/community/yeahchemical/49988.html?#cutid1). Based quite firmly in an RPG that I ~~was~~ am in. eta-- this is also my very first MCR fic. heh.

  


They say that The Event changed everything. All living and non living things changed in that one instant.

And were still changing.

Before New Orleans had drawn all kinds of people to it. Some hidden siren’s song that was a mix of old, new and dark. All of it, the melodies and harmonies of the city itself, held together with the weave of magic. 

The tourist boards touted it as the Old World and the New World meeting with a Creole flavour.

The natives and those sensitive knew better.

The city imploded and exploded in one instant, carrying with and changing all its inhabitants.

It still drew people to it. The song stronger now, more compelling with a longer range. It pulled at internal compasses, making Neu Orleans their true North.

Calling them home.

\+ + + + +

Gerard had heard the stories, even in Jersey, the whispers of ‘weird’ and ‘strange’ and ‘fucked up’ scenes, reached him in the dark recesses of his mom’s basement. They fueled his drawing, his art.

A dedication to some risk untaken in the darkly clothed blood stained figures.

The few friends he’d had after college tried to urge him to take a corporate job. Move to the city and make real money instead of schlepping his talent away in between Trenton and nowhere.

Gerard had his reasons for refusing.

After a while they stopped urging. They stopped calling all together.

He didn’t mind so much. He had all he needed in his quiet corner of the world, of Jersey.

Working away at a nowhere dream was better than trying to reach for something and not getting it.

Being at home also left him at home to take care of Mikey.

Mikey was also the reason he found himself with a blade pressed against his jugular.

\+ + + + +

Gerard had left his mother a note. Something with two sentences scrawled on the back of a grocery store recipe and a doodle of a hobo. 

He promised he’d call when they got there.

All the stories and the rumors never gave specifics. Never said that the magical Mecca laid all technology to waste within its city walls.

Ray was a likable enough guy. Gerard had known him since high school. Their moms belonged to the same bowling league and he and Gerard had even been in Scouts together.

Till Gerard and Billy Martin had got caught and kicked out for making out on the annual cook out.

Gerard was always glad that Scout Master Neil had just caught them making out. Twenty minutes before Billy’s mouth had been lower and a lot fuller.

Ray was always an easy going likable guy. Mikey seemed to be comfortable with him.

Gerard glanced in the backseat where Ray and Mikey seemed to be playing some kind of I Spy game, where Ray was the only one talking. Not that Mikey being silent was anything unusual.

The silence was almost comforting to Gerard now.

The doctors could never really say what triggered Mikey’s state. _Semi-catatonic state as a direct result from a traumatic event._

Seeing your father blow the back of his head off would probably set anyone off.

Or shut them off.

Gerard had been kept after school for instigating an incident. Funny how that incident involved him being kicked in the ribs and getting two fingers broken and the other two boys only leaving with his blood on their knuckles.

No one knows what really happened. The neighbors found Mikey sitting on the front steps mumbling to himself and rocking back and forth. He’d been ten at the time, no one to pick him up from school.

Mikey’d walked home alone to find… Well, to find that.

No one blamed Gerard.

Except maybe Gerard.

 

\+ + + + + 

The Blood Quarter was the first thing that Gerard, Ray, and Mikey had come to experience their first day in Neu Orleans. The Free Man’s Market in all its dark and dangerous beauty. Scarves, knives, and magicks for sale. Everything under the sun, anything a soul could dream up. Pull a thought from your head and it could be made corporeal and with a price tag.

Gerard’s van had broken down just within the city’s borders. A running car was a veritable anomaly in a land of magical aberration. He took it as a sign that this was where they were supposed to be. 

The pull and the constant hum of something that resonated in Gerard as soon as they’d crossed the state lines, grew stronger. He felt like one end of a tuning fork being rapped against a wall. The thrumming seeming to echo inside him and push him forward. He’d tried to talk to Ray about it. 

“I. There’s this thing--.”

“Yeah. I know.” Ray had answered in between offering Mikey bits of torn off Twizzler.

Mikey had met Gerard’s eyes briefly in the rearview and blinked.

It was something.

Gerard hoped, to a God he’d given up long ago, that look meant something.

\+ + + + + 

Gerard sold drawings. He would have laughed at the absurdity of it, if it weren’t paying for he, Ray, and Mikey to live. Their first day there, wandering through the stalls, his hand clasped around Mikey’s in a death grip. Ray following and pressing close at Gerard’s back. He knew they made an easy target, even the dark drawn in circles around his eyes and Ray’s wannabe gangster scowl did nothing to faze the weighing eyes all around the market’s perimeter.

Not that it mattered.

Money didn’t count for much here. Just dirty bits of paper with no magical pull to them.

Mikey’s stomach growled, the only sound coming from him. His body tense at Gerard’s side, aware of the pricklings of Others and Somethings around them.

Gerard stopped in the middle of a crowded aisle, stuck between a stall alive with squawking chickens and a gap toothed honest to God gypsy woman hawking bespelled scarves. A tall woman walked, floated toward them. Ray’s chattering died a quick death on an indrawn breath and a murmured ‘Oh fuck.’ Gerard blinked wondering if he did, she’d disappear. 

She moved toward them, her head coming up as if someone had yelled her name. Perhaps someone had, the noise was like a crush of sound, pressing against them. The gypsy woman tugged at his sleeve and Gerard looked down to pull his arm away, looking up again and the woman was gone.

Mikey took a step forward.

The woman reappeared and walked toward them a paper wrapped parcel in hand. She smiled and reached for Gerard’s free hand, placing the package in his hand. “Welcome.” She turned the smile to Ray and then lastly to Mikey. “He will find you again.” 

“What…”

She tilted her head to the side, eyes crinkling to reveal laugh lines. “Come find me sometime. Welcome.” She patted his arm and turned to leave, two small foxes nipping at her long skirts before she laughed and picked them both up.

Gerard turned to Ray and frowned. “What the fuck was that all about?”

“What’d she give you?” Ray asked instead of answering. 

“Dunno.” Gerard managed to tear off the wrapping one handed with the thing clasped under his chin.

“Huh. Wonder how she knew.” Ray said gently unwrapping Mikey’s fingers from the slats of a chicken cage.

Inside the wooden box lay a set of brushes, pencils, paper and paint. 

“Weird.”

\+ + + + + 

Living in Neu Orleans came by the way of bartering goods and services for what one needed. Gerard painted and drew, something in the air or the paint or just in the being, made his drawings move and interact. 

It’d scared him pissless the first time it happened. 

The tourists got a kick out of it.

He learned a spell to trigger them to do what he wanted. It’d cost him two flannel shirts, but it’d been worth it. Now he could make the drawings spout off whatever asinine saying the Normies wanted; make them move how he wished.

Gerard learned early on that there was a reason why he’d been called here. He’d laughed at first when the native Neu Orleans had talked about the Call. Like some primal pull to the triangle of land set between rivers and bayous. 

He’d stopped laughing soon after. 

He’d hoped when they’d left Jersey, that coming here would some how cure Mikey. Like some magickal cousin to the Grotto of Massabielle. The American answer to the waters of Lourdes.

They’d ended up living out of Gerard’s van. Taking all their belongings with them during the day, and by nightfall they’d go back. They were too far in from the outer shadows of the perimeter and too close to the Outside that most people stayed away. The worst thing that had happened was that someone slashed the tires and took the rubber.

Ray swore he saw a street kid wearing it as a vest the next day. 

Gerard figured that no one would take it, not that they could. The thing weighed a whole hell of a lot and probably looked a lot shittier than any of the squatter housing around the Blood Quarter. 

Ray’s good natured and easy going attitude landed him a job at one of the real stores in the city. He was a bike courier, delivering messages to all corners within the city limits. Each of them traded duties watching Mikey during the day. The days Ray had him, he chose assignments that kept him closer to the van. The days that Gerard watched him they stayed near the Riverwalk, where most of the other tourist trappers claimed space.

Some days Gerard hoped that Mikey would show further signs of coming back, showing some sign of getting better.

Other days he was calmed by the normalcy of Mikey’s abnormality. It was a quiet pocket in a city of noise and violence. The irony, or perhaps the fate, of this was that it was like Gerard was actually living in one of his comics.

That thought scared him shitless.

And made him hope for some kind of hero to emerge.

He just hoped that whoever was holding the pen wasn’t tagging him to wear the cape.

\+ + + + + 

Mikey was with Ray today, walking the routes and delivering goods and messages along the spiderweb pathways in the city. Gerard should have felt relieved to be able to work without the responsibility of looking after his brother.

But all he felt was anxious.

His spot had been claimed within days of his arrival to Neu Orleans. He had to bare his teeth and show the dull glint of his dad’s old Army utility knife. His space took up two squares of cracked concrete and part of a splintered wall. The wall made for a great display wall for his finished drawings and there was enough space on the asphalt to scrawl anything he felt that day. The chalk, as far as he could tell, wasn’t spelled. 

That didn’t stop the drawings from moving though.

Ray had jokingly suggested once that the magic wasn’t in the paints or brushes but from Gerard himself.

Gerard had just sat there eating beans off a still warm tortilla and let Ray’s laugh and words wrap around him, digesting them too. Mikey had crawled across the van floor to rest his head in Gerard’s lap, his fingers wrapping in the back of Ray’s shirt.

\+ + + + + 

Gerard had just done his fourth commission and was in the middle of selling a finished piece of a wyrm eating a serpent eating the sun, when Ray rode up and screeched to a halt and nearly stumbled off the bike. 

“He’s gone!” Ray shouted voice high pitched with worry.

Gerard stood pushing past his prospective customer and he grabbed Ray, and then looked up and down the street as if Mikey would be there in spite of Ray’s words. “What the fuck happened, Ray?” He strived for calm, to pull the hysteria from the five words.

Ray grabbed Gerard’s forearms, palms wet with sweat. His eyes were wild with panic, breathing hard. “I just ducked in to grab the package. Mikey hates that apothecary shop. You know the one with the red shutters and smells like sulphur? The owner makes Mikey do the hurt puppy noises. He usually waits for me outside. Mikey not the owner. And when I walked back out, he was gone. Fuck, Gee. Fuck. I was gone for like twenty seconds. Oh fuck.” 

Gerard resisted the urge to shake Ray. His fingers tightened minutely on the back of Ray’s elbows. “Meet me over by the shop. Go back to the van and see if he’s there. I’m going to check the Riverwalk. Maybe he got confused and went looking for me there.”

Ray nodded, relieved at being given instructions. “I’m sorr--.”

“It’s okay, man. Just… We just gotta find him, okay?” Gerard said turning back and snatching his drawings from the wall. The customers there still holding the piece of parchment. “Buy it or give it back. Price is final and I gotta go.” 

If he weren’t feeling as though his heart was going to leap from his throat, he might be smug about the trade he scored off the simple drawing.

If…

\+ + + + + 

Gerard really shouldn’t be surprised by the people that live in Neu Orleans. The kinds of people, beings really, that inhabited the city. Everything that he’d ever imagined up or someone else had pulled from fantastical dreams and put on paper had ended up in some form or another here on the streets.

Some of his regular customers often reminded him of something he once read or saw in a painting. Ray was still holding out to find a unicorn.

Gerard made a point long ago, before they even crossed state lines, never to talk to strangers. But today was an exception.

He asked anyone who would stop if they’d seen Mikey. He’d managed to sketch out a portrait of his brother. He could only seem to draw Mikey as if he were asleep.

Or dead.

Gerard gritted his teeth and refused to let his mind or mood fall that fast or that dark. 

Ray was scouring the other side of the Riverwalk, ducking into shops and asking around. 

They met in the middle and headed toward the water where the Cirque du Damné held court. They were a collection of gypsy performers, freak show acts, and carnival games. Par for the course in a city like Neu Orleans.

Gerard felt Ray tense beside him. His eyes flicked suspiciously, noting shadows and people as they moved out of their way and across their path.

“…In time the old man yielded, and lifted from the box a warm and glowing sphere, which he threw to his grandson.” A voice carried over the midway music, making both Gerard and Ray turn toward it.

“As the light was moving toward him, the human child transformed into a gigantic black shadowy bird-form, wings spread ready for flight, and beak open in anticipation. As the beautiful ball of light reached him, the Raven captured it in his beak!” The soft tinkling of the carousel fell in time with the soothing cadence of the words. 

“Moving his powerful wings, he burst through the smoke-hole in the roof of the house, and escaped into the darkness with his stolen treasure.”

Gerard and Ray made their way around the grotty stalls and broken toothed carnies to the small picnic area lying on the outer perimeters of the circus. There, gathered around a semi circle of splintered planks of wood that had, at one point in time, had been tables were a small throng of children listening to a story. 

“And that is how light came into the universe.”

The story teller was a slight young man, eyes line in dark kohl, hair falling in a soft curtain over one eye. Silver glinting off the ladder of rings along his ears, echoed in the small ring moving in time with his words. It wasn’t the long black leather duster coat or the equally dark shirt and pants that drew Ray and Gerard to him, but the person all but cuddled in his lap. 

Mikey’s eyes were closed, a half smile playing on his lips as the story teller stroked long clever fingers through the lank hair.

The children all clapped their delight in a smattering of applause and demands for more.

He shook his head and he waved them off. There was a brief flicking look up at Gerard before he continued, “Off with you. I know your parents are probably wondering where you hellions have gone off to.”

The children giggled and scampered away as per instruction from their personal pied piper.

“Mikey?” Gerard called softly, half afraid his brother was dead. Or hypnotized or something.

Mikey’s eyes opened and he held out his hand to Gerard, fingers curled up, reaching for his brother. 

“What’d you do to him?” Gerard asked in a low voice, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of the utility knife. 

Gerard’s answer was a quick tilt of the stranger’s head and a knowing smile. “You think I mean to steal your shiny treasure.” He laughed and traced his fingers along the underside of Mikey’s jaw. 

Mikey’s eyes closed and his fingers stretched further for Gerard.

“Let him go, man. I don’t want to have to hurt you,” Gerard tried to shove the note of anxiety from his voice. But Ray made a low sound of distress for him.

The stranger laughed and he moved his shoulders a bit, the faint clinking of metal against metal seemed to echo in the tiny pit of broken wood and gravel. Gerard felt a fine cool sweat break out along his shoulders. “Please don’t hurt him.” He never begged, but for Mikey he would. 

The stranger tilted his head to the other side, exposing the milk pale skin of his neck. Gerard could see the faint flutterpulse just under his chin. The boy was… delicate. It was the only word Gerard could pin on him. Delicate and dangerous.

“I would never destroy such a shining thing. I give my word I will not hurt him nor you. Lest you give me cause to.” He added almost as an afterthought, the faint smile never leaving his lips.

Gerard swallowed, the thick metallic taste of fear coating his throat. “Okay.” Ray took his cue from Gerard and they moved forward, closer to the table. Gerard’s fingers closed around Mikey’s and he eased a slight bit, eyes still on the stranger. “What do you want?”

Ray flanked Mikey from the other side, closer to the strange boy. “How’d you find him?”

“He came to me. And I want nothing more than for you to take better care of what you hold dear to you.” He paused and smirked. “Though perhaps I should charge you a finder’s fee.”

Gerard’s fingers closed automatically around the hilt of the knife again. His eyes narrowed darkly. “What do you want?” The question repeated.

“A shiny bit of silver perhaps.” His teeth flashed white in the growing dark. “Maybe you will let me fly with you.”

That startled a laugh out of Gerard. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I ain’t got any wings or a 747 on me at the moment.”

“Humans,” the boy said with a roll of his eyes. “Flying is fucking and fucking is flying. Both are glorious and one in the same.”

Ray moved closer to Mikey, giving the stranger an uncharacteristic glare. “We’re not whores, man.”

The smile that answered was both mocking and pitying. “Not much separates a whore and a lover, but a bit of coin. And coin comes in different forms.” He held his hands up and away from Mikey. “Take your kin. You’ve amused me. I’ll take that as payment.”

Gerard didn’t know whether to trust the boy, but he tugged gently at Mikey’s hand. “C’mon, Mikey.” 

Mikey blinked up at Gerard and he slithered out of the boy’s lap reluctance in every movement. Gerard had a momentary pang of remorse, a small one. “Thanks. For watching him.”

The stranger inclined his head and he unfolded himself from the table and took the two steps to put himself directly within Gerard’s personal space. His breath fanned gently against Gerard’s cheek.

Gerard’s breath stopped short, inhaling the scent of mint and jasmine.

“Ferenc!” A voice called from somewhere off from deep in the shadows. “Are you bothering the Normies again?” Gravel crunched under black booted feet, the second stranger’s smile friendlier if not as pretty. 

“I want to fly with this one, but he’s opposed to the idea.” Ferenc sighed softly and fluttered long lashes at his friends. “Buagh, aren’t he and his shiny treasure brother simply,” he snapped his teeth close to Gerard’s cheek. “Edible?”

Buagh flicked looks between Gerard and the other two and he smiled apologetically. “Please excuse my friend. Ravens aren’t known for minding personal space, nor are they mindful of anything beyond their own pleasure.”

“And shiny things.” Ferenc added with an impish smile. 

Gerard held his ground, fingers tight around the hilt of the knife. “Ferenc?” His American tongue tripping over the foreign cadence, butchering it to the more common ‘Frank’. 

“At your service…?” Ferenc answered in turn, smile still in place. He winked at Buagh. 

“Gerard,” Ray answered. “That’s Mikey. I’m Ray.” He ignored Gerard’s glare. “We’re glad Mikey found you instead of someone else.”

Ferenc raised an eyebrow and he nodded slightly. “You are welcome.” He tilted his head and nodded looking Gerard up and down appraisingly. “I will come and collect payment later.”

“You said we didn’t owe you anything.” Gerard said softly, not taking his eyes from the full lower lip in front of him, marred slightly by the silver ring. “That being amused at us was payment enough.”

“I changed my mind.” Ferenc said cheekily and darted in quickly for a kiss before whirling away.

If it weren’t for Ray’s squeak of surprise, Gerard would have thought he was hallucinating. He’d heard of Changers before. Met a lot who claimed to be Changers.

But seeing one Change in front of you was a whole new spin.

Ferenc spun on his heel, the faint sound of tinkling weaponry then a loud squawk and he was in the air.

“Ravens,” Buagh sighed and shook his head smiling fondly.

“He’s a Changer.” Gerard said, finalizing the thought process out loud.

Ray stared off into the spot of black that was quickly disappearing into the darker recesses of the night.

“You’re a quick one,” Buagh chuckled and he glanced up into the sky. “Welcome to Neu Orleans.”

The laugh turned into a bark and Ray squeaked again.

The wolf seemed to smile at them with the same gentle amusement as before. 

For the second time that night, Gerard watched as another Changer turned tail and left them.

Minutes passed in silence before Ray spoke up. “That was-.”

“Yeah. It was.” Gerard said blinking and shaking his head. He started slightly when Mikey’s hand slipped into his and squeezed. He looked up in surprise.

Mikey’s eyes were bright and alert behind the thick plastic lenses. He squeezed and tugged Gerard’s hand toward the path.

“I think he wants to go home, man.” Ray said, voice hushed.

Gerard squeezed Mikey’s hand back and he nodded. “Yeah, let’s go home.”

\+ + + + + 

The Event changed everything in New Orleans, the residual waves continued to change things. The natives and the newcomers either adapted and changed with the city, or they were swallowed by the magical whirlpool.

Gerard didn’t know what to expect from the city. From them, all of them.

But he figured the City was ready to accept them.

Calling them home.

 

fin.


End file.
